42 day mess

What a mess the issue of 42 days without charge has become. After failing to provide any convincing evidence on the issue, Brown managed to twist the arms of enough MPs to get his vote through. Camerons opposition was undermined by the Tory blogsite http://conservativehome.blogs.com/torydiary/2008/06/post.html which said

We know this isn't going to be popular among a great many ConservativeHome readers and 92% of adopted Tory candidates but we ought to publicly nail our colours to the mast and stand up with Ann Widdecombe, Norman Tebbit, Matthew d'Ancona, Melanie Phillips and Frank Field as supporters of the Government's attempts to introduce a period of 42 days' pre-charge detention..

No other western democracy has more than a couple of weeks, why do we need so long?
Their is much speculation about what Brown has promised MPs to get them to vote this way. And in the last hour David Davis has resigned to cause a by election on this issue. The Lib Dems have said they won't stand against him. Their opposition seemed to center around waiting for the Lords to defeat them. Lord Goldsmith, a Tony crony behind the Iraq war, said he would oppose this.

The question is will the Tories reduce it back if/when they win the next election? Brown has staked much on this, he must think it makes him look strong. He has persuaded some of the public, but the cost of his victory will be revealed in the coming days.